Business Ethics

Course code: MGT301/1

Term and year: Fall 2026

Day and time: Tuesday, 18:15–21:00

Instructor: David Lipka, Ph.D.

Instructor contact: david.lipka@aauni.edu

Consultation hours: Tuesday, 17:15–18:15

1. Course Description

This course explores the ethical dimensions of market activities, drawing from the fields of economics, social psychology, and moral philosophy. It examines the ethical challenges faced by businesses and the frameworks used to address them. Emphasis will be placed on understanding the principles of ethical decision-making, and the impact of business decisions on society.

2. Student Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:

• Understand key concepts and theories in business ethics.
• Analyze ethical issues in business using various ethical frameworks.
• Identify ethical tradeoffs in market activities.
• Apply ethical principles to real-world business scenarios.
• Develop critical thinking skills in assessing the ethical implications of business decisions.
• Cooperate in teams in a business-like setting.
• Express and defend their own position on ethical issues in oral presentation.
• Express and defend their own position on ethical issues in written presentation.

3. Reading Material

Required Materials

• Any textbook in business ethics published after 2000, or
• Ferrell, O. C., John Fraedrich, and Ferrell, L. Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making & Cases. 8th edition. South-Western College Pub, 2010. Available in the Library.
• List of required articles and case studies available in NEO.

Recommended Materials

• Podcast: Library of Economics and Liberty — EconTalk
• Blog: Marginal Revolution — Small Steps Toward A Much Better World
• Moral Foundations Theory
• Ethics Unwrapped — The Science of Everyday Ethics: UT Austin
• Business Ethics magazine — The Magazine of Corporate Responsibility
• Markkula Center for Applied Ethics — All About Ethics
• Smith, Adam. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Liberty Fund Inc., 1982.
• Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 5th ed. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1904. econlib.org
• McCloskey, Deirdre. The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce. First Edition. University Of Chicago Press, 2006.
• Henrich, Joseph. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Princeton University Press, 2015.
• Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Reprint edition. New York: Vintage, 2013.
• Cowen, Tyler. Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero. St. Martin's Press, 2019.

4. Teaching Methodology

• Real business cases resolved in the first person.
• Reflection on those cases, drawing in ethical theory and history only as the cases demand it.
• A rotating set of session formats: team deliberation; arguing the position you do not hold; the "hot seat," in which one student answers the room while holding the decision-maker's role; the "fishbowl," in which one team deliberates while the rest observe and then critique how it reasoned; and workshops in which teams draft a company policy or statement of purpose and then test one another's drafts.
• Short lectures where useful, for the stories, history, and frameworks students ask for.
• Short economic experiments played in class.
• Live anonymous polling.
• Team debates conducted as joint inquiry: reaching an impartial judgement together, rather than defeating an opponent.

5. Course Schedule

6. Course Requirements and Assessment (with estimated workloads)

*1 = Critical Thinking; 2 = Effective Communication; 3 = Effective and Responsible Action

7. Detailed description of the assignments

Every assignment below is graded on the same thing the classroom trains: how you reason, not the conclusion you reach. Across all of them, credit goes to reasoning in the first person, deciding in role what you would do; to giving real weight to the perspective you most resist; to honesty about what your decision sacrifices; and to clarity about where your knowledge ends. Reaching a particular conclusion, including the instructor's, earns nothing on its own.

Class Participation (team)

Students are assigned to teams at the start of the semester. From the very first session, classes run on real cases resolved in the first person: discussion and joint inquiry among the teams and the instructor, not lecture. The grade reflects the quality of the team's contribution to that inquiry: not whether the team reached the "right" answer or won an exchange, but whether it reasoned in the first person, gave real weight to the perspectives it was least inclined to accept, named what its chosen course would sacrifice, and stayed honest about the limits of its knowledge. All members are expected to contribute, though not necessarily by speaking. The division of labour is up to the team; a single spokesperson or equally shared interventions are both acceptable, and no member is penalised for not speaking. 16 percentage points are awarded at the midterm evaluation and 14 at the final evaluation.

Assessment breakdown

Class Participation (individual)

The team is organized like a business unit, with an elected Team Lead and members; the instructor serves as the Lead's supervisor. The Lead is responsible for ensuring that everyone contributes, and decides two grades for each member: individual class participation (10 percentage points) and individual contribution to debate preparation (10 percentage points). The second of these is what the "Debate (Individual)" line in §6 refers to: it assesses your contribution to your team's preparation for the debate, not an individual performance during it.

The Lead's specific duties are to: take team attendance (for compliance records; it carries no grade weight); send the instructor a brief weekly note on the team's activity; and submit an assessment of each member's contribution to debate preparation before the debate. The Lead proposes these grades to the instructor, who may hold one-on-one sessions with the Lead and members to ensure fairness. The Lead's own grade is set by the instructor from observed behaviour and that feedback; the Lead may earn up to an extra 5 percentage points as a bonus for outstanding management.

This is real and legitimate authority, and the course treats it as an ethical problem the Lead has to live with for the whole semester. Assessing honestly, by distinguishing among members rather than awarding everyone full marks, is not unkindness: in a role that authorises you to judge, the courage to judge fairly is itself an ethical demand.

Assessment breakdown

Debate

The debate is not a contest. It is a joint inquiry. Two teams are assigned the two strongest opposing positions on a case, and they work together toward the most impartial, best-integrated judgement the room can reach: either a shared conclusion everyone can endorse, or a precise account of why the disagreement cannot be settled without a real loss on one side. Positions are assigned well before the debate; if the teams agree among themselves on who argues what, the instructor respects it. The aim, in Adam Smith's words, is to be worthy of belief, not to win.

The debate runs in four moves:

1. The strongest case. Each team presents its assigned position at full strength. No rebuttal yet.
2. Restatement. Before replying, each team restates the other team's case until that team agrees it has been understood correctly. You may not answer a position you cannot yet state fairly.
3. Open discussion. The floor opens: no speaking order, anyone may speak, and the instructor chairs. The three permitted contributions are asking a question, granting a point, and proposing a formulation both sides might accept. No one may introduce a new argument for their own side until they have first credited something from the other's. What is assessed here is the quality of these contributions, not how much time anyone takes.
4. Closing statement. One statement per team, which must do three things: give the most integrated judgement the team can now endorse, or explain precisely why the two positions cannot be combined; name what the team's own position had to give up; and say where the team's view moved and what moved it.

The debate is graded as a team performance throughout. How the team divides the work is up to the team, and no student is required to speak in order to earn the team's grade. Where the debate moved you, individually, is written up in your Case Study (see below), not stated in the room.

Students may use only a single A6 note card; no computers or phones.

Assessment breakdown: Debate (Team)

Case Study

You are required to resolve in writing the case assigned to your team, in the first person. Note: The written analysis is not collective work, and it is not an evaluation of someone else. You take the role of the person who has to decide, and you say what you would do, and why; your position may differ from the one you argued in the debate.

Deadline. The case study is due on Friday 18 December, three days after the final debate, so that the debate can inform it.

Address the following:

1. Identification of morally relevant facts. Identify the facts that carry moral weight, including what you cannot know.
2. Your decision, in role. Place yourself in the role of the person who has to decide. Given that role, the power it carries, and what you can know, what will you do, and why? Decide; do not merely lay out the options.
3. The strongest case against your decision, and where it moved you. Give real weight to the perspective you are least inclined to accept: state its case at full strength, as its holders would put it, not as a straw man. You heard that case argued in the debate by people who held it, so say what it did to your view: name the point you could not answer and what you did with it, or say plainly that your view did not move and why not. "It did not move, and here is why" earns full credit if the reasons are good; a claimed change of mind you cannot account for does not.
4. What your decision costs, and where your knowledge ends. Name what your decision sacrifices: the value given up, the harm that cannot be avoided. Mark clearly where your knowledge runs out and the matter passes to someone else's judgement, to a rule, or to a process.
5. Reasoning and justification. Make the whole logical and well-reasoned, supported by evidence from the case.

Assessment breakdown

8. General Requirements and School Policies

General requirements

All coursework is governed by AAU's academic rules. Students are expected to be familiar with the academic rules in the Academic Codex and Student Handbook and to maintain the highest standards of honesty and academic integrity in their work. Please see the AAU intranet for a summary of key policies regarding coursework.

Course specific requirements

Devices. Most sessions use live anonymous polling, so bring a phone, tablet, or laptop. Responses are anonymous, never attributed to you, and never graded individually; they exist so the class can see its own reasoning. Devices are not permitted during the final debate, where a single A6 note card is the only aid allowed.

Experiments. Several sessions include a short economic game played for small stakes (sweets or points). Winnings are never converted into grades and have no effect on your mark; the stakes exist only to make the choices real.

Attendance. A large share of this grade is earned in the room. Team participation is 30% of the final mark, and the work of a session (deliberation, debate, games) cannot be reproduced afterwards. Absence is governed by the AAU attendance policy; where a session cannot be made up, the participation earned in it cannot be recovered.

Team membership. Teams are formed in the first two weeks and are fixed for the term. Each team elects a Team Lead who assesses members' individual contributions, as described in §7.

Late submission of the Final Case Study is governed by the AAU policy on late coursework.